The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) announced on Tuesday that it is proposing amendments to existing regulations. The aim is to limit the production and sale of imitation products being marketed as paneer. This initiative seeks to protect consumers from being misled by substandard alternatives that do not meet the quality of authentic paneer.
In simple terms, analogue paneer refers to a product that is made to resemble paneer but uses edible ingredients other than, or in place of, the milk components normally used to make paneer – for example, vegetable fats or other non-dairy ingredients. So far eight states, namely, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, have banned the sale of such product over food safety concerns. Under the new policy, restaurants were instructed to take corrective measures, including replacing analogue dairy products with natural dairy products and removing dishes containing such ingredients from their menus if an immediate switch is not feasible.
The term “analogue paneer” has been gaining attention lately with the crackdown by food regulatory bodies, sparking questions as to why non-dairy paneer is called analogue paneer and not fake paneer. Paneer, meanwhile, may be described as “fake” when a product is passed off as paneer despite being made with ingredients that do not meet the prescribed standards for paneer or are inedible. Last month, food delivery platform Zomato also announced a zero-tolerance policy on the sale of dishes containing analogue “paneer”, warning that restaurants failing to comply could be delisted from the platform.
